Meridian Explorer DAC Improves Digital Music Playback

Computers are great tools for storing, organizing, finding and distributing our music files, but they’re not always the best tools for listening. Still, lots of people are hooking up their laptops to their home audio systems. To get the most out of a setup like that, a high-quality DAC (digital-to-analog converter) is needed. Meridian just announced a new one, called the Explorer USB DAC.

The Explorer is an asynchronous 24bit/192kHz, class 2 DAC with high-quality filter capacitors, 6-layer printed circuit board, and a built-in headphone amp. It features low-jitter oscillators for 44k1 and 48k based sample rates. A 3.5mm output allows direct connection to a music system. An optical digital output provides full resolution for receivers or DACS (up to 96kHz). Indicator lights on the unit tell you what the incoming sample rate is.